The first 21st-century pandemic, digital transformation and climate change are altering assumptions that have shaped physical campuses for hundreds of years.
Campuses are palimpsests, places on the earth reshaped layer upon layer, always in the process of becoming a different place. Adapting a physical campus is a slow, incremental process. Pieces of earlier layers are retained as the whole is modified to meet changing requirements and environmental conditions.
The most visible adaptations accommodate growth in enrollment, research and new academic programs. Other adaptations are systemic and virtually invisible. Early steps in digital transformation and hybrid pedagogies were visible in bits of hardware popping up here and there. Energy conservation was rarely visible while movement to zero-out carbon has only recently begun to change the physical appearance of campuses with living buildings.
State of campuses – Since early 2022, I have talked with scores of former colleagues and planning professionals about the physical state of campuses. My sense of a changing campus came into focus from these conversations.
Everyone was emerging from constant pandemic threat. The masks and plexiglass were disappearing, but no one was returning to a pre-March 2020 world. As disruptions became long-lasting, the expectations of students, faculty, and staff for their campuses and their buildings were shifting.
Some building projects continued as if nothing had changed. Other projects were paused to allow adaptation to hybrid pedagogies, remote officing, and more intermittent campus use patterns. Nearly all my colleagues recognized the changing patterns of faculty, staff and students. None were certain of the downstream consequences. At the same time, they shared a growing awareness that the extremes of flooding and drought, air quality and heat of a changing climate were just beginning.
I share my colleagues’ uncertainty about how to respond to these converging forces, but we can begin to see a path in adaptation of existing and future facilities projects, building performance requirements, campus infrastructure, and land use. Here is my take on these adaptations.
At the scale of the campus – Existing and future buildings are being redesigned to support hybrid pedagogies. Underutilized classroom and office space is being reallocated for students and faculty, for those occasions when they find value in being on campus. Building envelopes and systems are being redesigned to account for increasing temperature extremes and reduced air quality. Offices for many administrative functions were moved off-campus years ago, and now are moving to hybrid models and home offices.
Climate action plans are reducing the carbon footprints of campuses. Land use impacts are ranging from divesting unneeded real estate to consideration of migration to higher ground. Campus infrastructure is being modified to be more resilient to the consequences of drought and flood, heat and wind, and power and communication disruptions.
All these adaptations are happening incrementally, none quickly. For example, while a classroom renovation project might take less than a year, major building projects usually take 5 to 7 years from inception to occupancy. Infrastructure replacement and adaption projects can extend for a decade or more.
Beyond new construction, the physical changes to the parts and systems of the campus can go largely unnoticed. The confluence of climate change, digital transformation and post-pandemic patterns may increase visibility as infrastructure and adaptation projects evolve.
Adaptations are underway in classrooms, study space and libraries, and faculty and administrative offices. Many campuses are moving to carbon neutrality and resilience.
- Even in the digitally hybridized future of higher education, there will be classrooms. They will be used by choice and when it makes a difference.
- In the future of higher education, there will be libraries and places for people to meet to share ideas, technology and visual forms of communication.
- Patterns of campus use by students, teachers and staff have been ruptured. Physical presence has become a choice rather than a requirement.
- Colleges and universities have an obligation to honor their mission and commitment to the future by urgently respond to climate change and becoming more resilient.
In the long history of campuses, adaptation to changes in design requirements and expectations has been constant and gradual. As we approach the middle of the 21st century acceleration of both digital transformation and climate change is leading to different campuses. The physical campuses that continue to thrive will have reduced their carbon footprint to zero, adapted to changing climate and the hybridization of the institution.
Until recently the physical campus was the same as the institution. They were the same organism, as shell and snail. The campus was a direct reflection of the institution’s mission and scale. The institution required physical places for all its students, faculty and staff. These assumptions began to dim in relevance in the last decade of the 20th century, but the change was barely noticed. Building programs were still tied to the rules of thumb and patterns of the past.
The disconnect between traditional building programs and the physical needs of the digitally transformed institution were laid bare in 2020. The pandemic disrupted well understood patterns of use which were the reasons for campuses in the first place. This disruption is changing building programs, the use of existing facilities and the campus itself as an expression of the institution. The snail has escaped its shell.
The specifics of adapting the campus will be unique for every institution, and none of it will be easy. There may be some with no climate threats and a willingness to ignore their carbon footprint. These campuses may seem unchanged. The band will play on, perhaps for a long time. For all the rest, campuses will be rebuilt to be carbon-zero and more resilient to the effects of climate change.
Campuses prepared for the middle of the 21st century will not be collections of historical artifacts relying on prior technologies plus new artifacts with new technologies. These campuses and their existing buildings will be adapted to meet the needs of a community of increasingly transient students and scholars in a changing climate.
Campus planners are beginning to realize they are planning campuses for a planet that is measurably different. This adaptation will be an existential challenge for generations of students, educators, facilities professionals, administrators and boards.
It will be like rebuilding ships while at sea.
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